Category Archives: Social Media

The Chronicle of Higher Education posted a very interesting article in their Wired Campus tech blog a few days ago on Snapchat. What is Snapchat you ask? Ask a teenager, and they’ll tell you that you send photos that disappear after 10 or less seconds. Ask anyone above 25, and it’s that app with a little ghost. Ask Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and it’s a punch in the face. Just last year (November 2013), Zuckerberg offered $3 billion to buy Snapchat, which was turned down. I know, right!? Who would turn down $3 billion? Especially with the founders being 23 and 25 at the time! But, they believe their product, Snapchat, has way more potential than $3 billion, and so do all the teenagers running from Facebook to Snapchat. Check out this pie graph of how many photos are shared daily on Snapchat compared to Facebook and Instagram…I do not blame the University of Houston for adopting Snapchat as a medium for reaching their current and prospective students. It just makes sense. Teenagers and young adults are using less of Facebook, and more of Snapchat to communicate. So why not go to them? Like I said, I’m fresh out of undergrad and currently working on my master’s degree—I’m a millennial. If Snapchat was around when I was searching for colleges, I would definitely be drawn to a school that was sending me snaps. That would tell me that this university understands me, understands my generation…and this would be a place that I would be understood. After all, that’s all kids want nowadays, to be understood.